Robert Edward Walsh Looking Back a keepsake from Memoir for Me memoirforme com

To my dad from his favorite daughter

Regrets I ve had a few But then again too few to mention I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption I planned each chartered course each careful step along the byway and more much more than this I did it my way Frank Sinatra

Bob 1956 Robert Bob Walsh has lived a good life And being his youngest and only daughter I hope he has several more years still left in him One thing I often reflect on is how hard he worked during my childhood years I would bound downstairs early in the morning and he had already left for work only to return after all of us had eaten dinner and the kitchen was cleaned up for the evening I was curious if he regretted the long hours the years of clocking in early and the late drives home His response surprised me Perhaps because he has had years of retirement to soften the memories but one thing he was certain about was he holds no regrets 5

Bob was the youngest of five and the only sibling to earn a college degree after years of night school balancing work family and schooling This act he reflects is what distinguished him from the scores of southside Irish boys trying to bang out a living in Chicago While his brothers were working blue collar jobs as mechanics and laborers Bob secured a work study arrangement at Commonwealth Edison during his high school years It was 1958 I started as low as you can go literally and figuratively in ComEd s mail room But soon he had a lucky break scoring a job that would allow him to meet Morgan Murphy Executive Vice President of ComEd He ran trivial office errands but the job afforded him the opportunity to watch Murphy interact and observe all the goings on in a large corporate office In a fortuitous coincidence Walsh and Murphy occasionally took the same train home together allowing for more casual conversation It was through Murphy s urging that Bob decided to apply to DePaul s evening school program in 1961 The degree would take him almost ten years as he juggled work family military service Bob s brothers were all much older and his father too entrenched in his life as a Chicago cop to get much mentoring at home 6 Bob with his father William 1956

Bob in the army reserves 1963 With his first born Thomas 1965 My father was more of a boss at home than any bosses I had at work He needed a fifth kid like he needed a hole in his head As a result even brief encounters with people such as Morgan Murphy would help shape Bob into the professional he would later become In 1963 Bob enlisted in the US Army Reserves serving six months full time active duty in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri He would spend the next five years juggling active reserve duty and weekly drill meetings with school work and family After his active service he returned to Chicago and ComEd This time Bob was placed in the personnel department in charge of scheduling and setting up audio and visual equipment for conferences and meetings around the building The ComEd Director of Education and Training later offered Bob a step up to a managerial position a pivotal moment in Bob s life that would transition him from hourly wages to a more comfortable salary as well as put him on a faster career track At this point I was married had one or two kids and owned my first house But I still wasn t satisfied with the opportunities and rate of promotion at ComEd We wanted more of everything just like everyone did 7

Working in personnel Bob was able to interact with many people inside and outside the company including a vendor from a small familyowned company named Midwest Visual Equipment Company Sales representative Hank Mueller asked Bob out to lunch to talk about more than ComEd s AV needs By the time the meal check had arrived Bob had a job offer fully commission based and now a decision to make Mom thought it was a crazy idea I had no sales experience and was leaving a reliable salary for a commission based job But I was convinced I could make a lot of money there so I jumped He began at Midwest Visual in 1966 Bob was given a small territory to cut his teeth on and failed miserably He ran thousands of dollars into debt and ended up owing the company money at the end of the year Luckily Midwest s VP of Sales Bob Hiller had faith in Bob Walsh and forgave his debt Better yet he got a better territory and a chance to try again at sales This time it worked Things really took off for me In the 1970s Midwest Visual outfitted the historic Sears Tower sold millions of dollars in equipment and was selected as a one of Sears Vendors of the Year Bob Walsh was critical to the sale Later Bob Hiller retired from his VP position and the new CEO Tom Roberts promoted Walsh to a managerial position and then soon after to VP of Sales and Marketing For the next 25 years they would work hand in hand growing the company from a small local AV shop to a national player With work success much of Bob s baggage including low confidence and depressive periods just fell away Midwest Visual offices 1980s 8 Weekly sales team meeting

Bob Walsh 1976 With Tom Roberts 1992 I may have never planned it out this way but once I tasted success I never looked back Years passed and Roberts and Walsh began to envision a coordinated retirement leaving Midwest Visual in the hands of the next generation A few years before both retired in 2003 Tom Roberts sold the company to a NASDAQ corporation that unfortunately went bankrupt only a few years later Turns out it was a good time to get out If you had told me while working in the ComEd mailroom that someday I would own a nice car have a second home and put four kids through college I would never have believed it Bob Walsh had many people in his working life pushing him to strive for more While he didn t plan out his trajectory he sure as hell took advantage of every opportunity and break that came his way x Bob was born July 1 1940 in St Leo s parish on the southside of Chicago It was a working class neighborhood filled with immigrants from Poland Italy Ireland and other parts of Europe William Walsh Chicago policeman and Bob s father always had colorful language for the neighbors and the boiling pot of kids Bob played with everyday They would play tag up and down the alley and Cowboys and Indians alongside some nearby railroad tracks 9

The tracks were up on a hill that became the epicenter of their makeshift playground In winter they would sled perilously down the steep hill ending up on Sangamon Street In summer an abandoned railcar alongside the tracks became a fire pit and stove We d throw whole potatoes in the pit The skin would turn black but underneath was a perfectly baked potato Bob s childhood home on Sangamon was a classic Chicago bungalow still standing today He would grow up in this house together with his parents William and Rebecca and four other brothers Bill Joe Dan and Jim The house had two bedrooms and one bathroom tight quarters for a family of seven To make life more manageable some creative real estate tactics came to play We had a semiannual migration to the attic during the winter months and then out to the back deck in the summer months That was the only way we could fit five Walsh boys in that house The bathroom workaround was even more unconventional My father hung a shower head from a pipe in the basement ceiling and we showered over the drain in the floor Believe it or not that was a great shower Bob with his mother Rebecca on Sangamon Street 1951 10

Bob 1953 Bob went to St Leo s Grammar School where he was brought to task by demanding nuns and forced to trudge outside to use the bathroom I remember heading out in rain wind ice and snow and hearing the nuns yell at us to move it along Thankfully we did not have to genuflect in f ront of the urinals After getting the required amount of Catholic ruler rapping and catechism he moved on to Calumet the neighborhood public high school There he met several good friends including the man who would become my own godfather Bob Kalchbrenner Overall Bob Walsh was a good kid but he got into sporadic bits of trouble like any red blooded adolescent male One night while his parents were down the street at McGann s tavern Bob snuck the Walsh family car out to hit up Skip s Drive In for a hamburger and coke The car a 1950 two tone green Buick sedan was not a flashy car It was big and ugly but I didn t care My friends all saw 15year old me driving so I was thrilled 11

Bob drove the car back home cautiously obeying the speed limit and approached the house with a collective sigh of relief Unfortunately he had never practiced backing the car in so on his first attempt he took out the side of the garage denting the passenger side door The next day Sunday came and went The car remained blissfully in the garage for the entire week as Bob s father took the train to work each day It wasn t until the following weekend that Bob was confronted only after several other siblings were shaken down first Bob s father a detective used a stern gaze and perhaps some on thejob techniques to get to the bottom of the story William Robert Edward what happened to the car Bob Yes sir I do Long pause William Well would you care to enlighten me Bob spit the story out and spent the next hour harangued over how horrible it could ve been if he had gotten into an accident or driven off a cliff For years the incident would live on in infamy The dent in the door remained unrepaired a constant reminder of his son s careless joyride 12 Ms Spencer s Advisory Calumet High School Class of 1958 Bob Walsh and Bob Kalchbrenner are both in back row third from left and and fifth from left respectively

From L R Rebe Dan William 1954 In the Sangamon basement 1953 That moment haunted me for years to come Reflecting on his parents brought mixed emotions His mom Rebecca or Rebe pronounced ree bee was remembered as feisty kind and loving She was a bit heavyset but had a zest for life and a great sense of humor Her laughter was infectious The Walsh bungalow was the site of many parties and Rebe was the perfect hostess Whether it was a dinner party with friends or a military send off for one of the Walsh boys Rebe would be down in the basement drinking beer and holding her own perfectly well in a room filled with men With Bob s father often out of the house both physically and emotionally distant Rebe filled the role of both mother and father for Bob He tagged along with his mom on errands to the butcher and the grocery store always by foot or streetcar On occasion she would treat her youngest to a Sunday matinee Bob would recall his father much differently By the time I came around he was a somewhat grouchy man Any parental charm must have been spent on previous brothers 13

But thinking about his father s career brought awe and respect William Walsh was a plainclothes policeman or otherwise known as a detective Most notably he brought in a suspect who was at large for burglarizing a local tavern and killing a man Detective Walsh found an overcoat on the scene with a laundry mark He used the mark to track the coat back to a tailor who offered the owner s listed address That evening Walsh led a team into the suspect s apartment catching him in the wee hours of morning with a pistol under his pillow With legendary stories like these William was a daunting personality I grew up fearful of my father On top of a strict upbringing Bob was diagnosed with depression early in his childhood years This would follow him his whole life and pose a challenging obstacle with life s ups and downs struggling to make a career and raise four kids Rebe and William Walsh 1964

Bob and Mary Ann 1963 x She had the prettiest eyes of any girl I had ever met This was how Bob described meeting his future wife It was 1961 and the Beverly Lounge was packed to the gills Mary Ann Foley was there fake ID in hand with her sister Norine and a few classmates Bob was introduced first to Norine then eventually Mary Ann The two struck up a conversation and had a great evening I was dating other girls casually up until this point but when I met Mary Ann that was it I knew not to look any further Weeks passed and they would meet again this time Bob gathered up enough courage to ask Mary Ann out on a date Future dates followed and the two became smitten with one another In 1963 Bob was facing the draft Instead of heading overseas he chose the army reserves which required six months active service in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri During the time away absence made their love grow fonder Mary Ann wrote letters daily and Bob did his best to write back as often as time allowed 15

The letters shifted from casual to plans of spending the rest of their lives together About once a month Bob would catch a ride home with Don Carey who had an old Porsche and lived in Milwaukee They left at noon on Saturday after Don got off his shift and got home just in time for date night It was a lot of driving to do for 24 hours in Chicago but it allowed Bob to spend time with Mary Ann Finally Bob returned home from service and promptly bought his intended the most beautiful ring he could afford That diamond has been expanded significantly since then not sure how that happened He planned a night out and hid the ring in the glove compartment of his car with the velvet box popped open so the overhead light would hit it just right He picked Mary Ann up for a night out and couldn t wait any longer They were backing out of the driveway when Bob asked Mary Ann to get something out of the glove compartment for him Mary Ann opened it gasped and said yes They have been married now for 50 years In that time they have had four children and are now grandparents to six grandchildren leaving a legacy of which anyone would be proud Not many couples see 50 years of marriage these days Bob and Mary Ann on their wedding day Nov 7 1964

Walsh Family 1983 My advice Always be truthful Discuss your problems Support one another It s not magic It s communication Life has been good to Bob Walsh His happiest memories include graduating from DePaul after many years of hard work and the investments in each and every new home This journey would take them from a third floor walkup apartment in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago to their first home in Oak Lawn then on to a new home in Oak Forest From there they went north to Lincolnshire where Bob eventually built a custom house As success came a second home outside of Phoenix Arizona followed But his life has been far from perfect Battling depression his whole life Bob faced dark periods time and time again and had to find the inner strength to pull himself out He faced financial worries buried a son much too young and is now fighting cancer head on The problems I have now I need to put in perspective I ve had a lot of good things in my life from the woman I married to the kids God gave us I m going to be 75 this year and I have no interest living to 105 My accomplishments have far exceeded my expectations 17